


Wings

by choriarty



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, M/M, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:57:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choriarty/pseuds/choriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil wakes up in the hospital after being stabbed, and the first thing he wonders is if he is dead or not. The sight he beholds does not help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

When Phil woke up, he had a moment when he thought he did not. The room was bright and painful to look at, his eyes opening and closing rapidly to dull the shock. It took two seconds to regain feeling in his body, which immediately told his brain that it ached. He felt needles and tubes connected to what seemed like every inch, and his head felt like it had been hit with a sledge hammer. Phil’s vision recovered slowly and he groaned, the sound making his parched throat sting.

There was movement to his right and a voice. The ringing in his ears made it hard to decipher who it was and what they were saying. All at once there was a presence hovering above him, and the lights began to dim as his eyes got used to the room. Phil thought he was dead.

Leaning over him was Steve Rogers. His eyes were a bright blue, filled with sudden hope and happiness. He wore a weak smile, which repeatedly said something. When the ringing subsided, Phil would find out that he was saying his name. As the corners of his vision cleared up, he noticed something odd.

“Am... I dead?”

Steve shook his head and gave a friendly pat on the shoulder. “No, you’re alive.”

“Are you sure? It’s pretty bright in here.”

The captain gave a forced chuckle and looked down, then up at the lights. He shook his head and sat backed away, sitting down on the chair beside the hospital bed. “I have to admit, we kind of thought you wouldn’t make it for a while. But, here you are.”

Phil did not know how to take that, though not for the reason you think. Not because the room was too bright, his body felt eerily light, nor the fact that his childhood hero had been leaning over him like in those goddamned romantic comedies. He noticed none of those compared to the fact that the man was sporting a pair of big, fluffy, white wings. Phil’s head turned to the side to watch his visitor, his gaze flickering to the metaphorical elephant in the room.

The wings moved with Steve as he shifted in his seat, twitching and avoiding the medical equipment. There was absolutely no sign that they were NOT there. They moved when the captain did, adjusting as he moved his elbow to where they once rested and doing anything that wings would do if they were normally located on a person. Phil wondered how many painkillers he had been given just as someone else strode in.

Tony Stark pushed the door open like as if he was a man on a mission, and his eyes travelled quickly from Steve to Phil, fixing on his like a hawk. His expression softened and stress lines disappeared. “So,” he began loudly. “Agent Die-Hard is finally awake. Nice of you to let me know, Cap.”

“He only woke up a minute ago, Stark. No need for the dramatics you obviously have planned.”

“But I’ve been marathoning soap operas all week for this!” he moaned.

Phil tried not to throw up. Tony Stark calmed down and leaned on his right foot, with his own pair of wings acting accordingly and folding back down from their extended position. They were unlike Steve’s, not the pure white that one expects on an angel, but instead that of a bird. The first thing that came to the agent’s mind was ‘parrot’. They were a bright red with splashes of blue and green. Touches of yellow sat on the tip of the bottom.

“Uh, you okay there, Agent? You look a bit green.” Tony suddenly cut into his train of thought. While Phil had been gawking at the man’s wings, the two Avengers in the room had been talking without him. His eyes moved to Steve and caught his worried expression.

“I-I’m fine,” Phil somehow managed to get out. “Just a tad dizzy.”

Stark seemed to relax at that, as unreassuringly as it was, but the other man still stared at the agent. “Do you know what they pumped into me?” he asked, earning a look of confusion and concern from both of his visitors. “Because I’m seeing-”

Then more people bust in, permanently cutting Phil off. They pushed past the man of iron (getting a noise of protest and annoyance) and moved to get a better view of the alive agent. There was Nick Fury (wings without feathers, bat-like), Clint Barton (white and black, a sleek design. Probably a swallow), Natasha Romanov (black and shiny, a raven), and surprisingly Pepper Potts (yellow, canary). Each one of them sported a pair of wings that shifted and moved as they did, showing their emotions.

Fury’s were half-extended, wary and ready but not on full alert. He watched the other people in the room for any kind of trouble or hint of suffocating Phil. Hawkeye’s twitched in excitement, though he masked his emotion with his face. Natasha’s were neatly folded behind her and her eyes said she already knew the agent would have woken up. Pepper had her hands covering her mouth and she was positively beaming, her wings relaxed.

“Quit acting like I came back from the dead,” Phil groaned and rolled his eyes. He felt like heaving the food his stomach did not have, like he was hungry and absolutely sick at the same time. His head ached like someone had stuck a nail into it and he wanted to wake up from this. Phil did not know what to think or what to do. It seemed like no one else noticed the wings but him, and that made it very hard not to stare at them. They did not show any signs of going through walls or other wings, dashing any hopes the agent had that they might be hallucinations.

“But you did,” Fury grimly interrupted anything anyone else was about to say. “You were checked out for five minutes, then you did so again twice more. It’s a goddamn miracle you’re alive right now.”

Phil did not talk again that day. His mouth felt dry even after someone handed him a glass of water and his throat was constricted. People said things to him that he did not register or hear, their expressions hopeful and relieved. Someone might have been trying to explain what happened while he was out, but he was not paying attention.

In the end, it was Fury and Captain Rogers who cleared everyone out of the room to let the agent rest. Before the man left, he sternly ordered Steve to go home and get some rest as well as eat some motherfucking food. His protests were dismissed as dumb and he eventually nodded, watching Fury leave. Steve glanced back at Phil once more, whose eyes were slowly closing from the exhaustion that was this day’s events. His wings twitched in worry and he moved back to the agent.

Assuming that Phil was too tired to remember or asleep, he placed a set of near mint (and slightly foxed around the edges) Captain America trading cards on the bedside stand, and moved the glass of water closer for convenience. His eyes lingered on the agent and he wondered if the strong protectiveness he had adopted for him was spawned from guilt. His heart clenched at the thought, and he decided to look forward instead. Phil was alive, and that was all that mattered. Steve was going to make up for his mistakes, but for now the man needed sleep.

Steve’s wings protectively extended over the bed as he tucked Phil in.


	2. Fatigue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil comes up with a list of reasons why he is seeing wings, and Agent Sitwell drops by for a visit.

When Phil woke up, he was alone. The room was still the same, as were the bright lights that assaulted his eyes. His muscles felt sore and unused, stiff from how long he had been in the bed. Though he had been sleeping for god knows how long he was still tired. The agent’s mind was torn between attempting to catch more sleep or jumping out of bed and stretching his body.

The room was empty, unlike last time, and Phil let out a breath he did not know he had been holding. No matter how much he wished, he could not forget what he saw before. Wings, everyone he knew having wings. It was almost something from a science fiction novel. His mind ran with excuses and possible explanations. Bad drugs, a wound infection, brain damage, fatigue, it was all desperate but one of them had to be right.

Without hesitation, he reached for the notepad beside his bed. As he grabbed the pen his heart skipped a beat and possibly stopped altogether. Before his eyes were his Captain America trading cards. He carefully placed his notepad onto the bed sheets and picked up the card set as if it was a delicate flower. Spread out, he could see that each one was signed by Steve Rogers himself. The signature was placed where it did not cover any important part of the drawing.

It was a dream come true, better than anything he could have imagined.

If not a bit late.

Carefully, he stacked and put them beside his hip on the covers, then reached back for the pen. Phil wrote down a list on the notepad, stopping every minute or so to think of another point. Just as he finished, the door opened and Agent Sitwell cautiously stepped in. As soon as he caught sight of Phil, his eyes lit up and he went to his friend. Phil closed the notepad and put it down.

“I thought that Fury was trying to pull my leg...” There was a long pause, neither of them taking the first step towards a civilized conversation.

“Remind me to smack myself if I ever listen to him again, will you?” Jasper smiled, more of relief than anything else.

“I’ll take a note.”

“First I didn’t believe him when he told us you were dead, then he suddenly tells us you’re alive and I swear to god I almost punched him right there.”

Phil just watched the man rant and grinned, shaking his head. Jasper coughed and interrupted himself in order to stop, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I guess what I mean to say is, I’m glad that you’re a stubborn ass.”

“And where do you think I get that from?”

Agent Sitwell laughed, honest to god laughed, for the first time in weeks. His laugh slowly became louder and he held his stomach and the bed railing, the brown and white speckled feathers on his wings shaking as he did.

“You’re terrible for me, Phil.” he sighed.

“Not as terrible as you, Jasper.”

They talked more after that. Talked about stupid things that went on around the base and helicarrier, about how Jasper had taken care of ‘Phil’s’ Avengers when he was sleeping, and what kind of trouble their little group of agents had gotten into. Sitwell promised him to try and smuggle a bit of paperwork for him to mull over while he was here, in order to keep him sane, and Phil promised not to work so hard.

They laughed and finally said their goodbyes. The door clicked shut behind the agent and Phil’s smile slowly faded as his mind wandered to other things. He took out the notepad once more and used the pen to cross out one thing.

‘Fatigue’.

Four more reasons to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so so short and I apologize. I got this written a month ago and never knew where to go next. NOW I do and the story shall go on! I will post this short tidbit to prove I am not dead!!! Yayyy not dead!

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! Prologue finished! Hopefully I'll have more written and posted in a week.


End file.
